Adventures in the Later Roman Empire

20 October 2009

Eagle of the Ninth updated

Shooting progresses on the upcoming film version of Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth. Shooting has finished in Hungary and had now moved to Scotland where it wraps at the end of next month. The latest at Comingsoon.net:

Tahar Rahim, the star of one of this year's most acclaimed films, A Prophet, has joined the cast of the Roman epic adventure The Eagle of the Ninth,
currently being directed by Academy Award winner Kevin Macdonald and
produced by Duncan Kenworthy. The film is co-financed by Film4 with
Focus Features, which holds worldwide rights excluding U.K. free-TV.

Heading the cast are Channing Tatum (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the upcoming Dear John), Jamie Bell (Defiance, Jumper), two-time Golden Globe Award winner Donald Sutherland, and Mark Strong (the upcoming Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood). Macdonald is reunited on the new film with Jeremy Brock, BAFTA Award-winning screenwriter of his 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, who has adapted the screenplay of The Eagle of the Ninth from Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic novel of the same name.

The Eagle of the Ninth
is set in the dangerous world of second-century Britain. In 140 AD,
twenty years after the unexplained disappearance of the entire Ninth
Legion in the mountains of Scotland, young centurion Marcus Aquila
(Tatum) arrives from Rome to solve the mystery and restore the
reputation of his father, the commander of the Ninth. Accompanied only
by his British slave Esca (Bell), Marcus sets out across Hadrian's Wall
into the uncharted highlands of Caledonia – to confront its savage
tribes, make peace with his father's memory, and retrieve the lost
legion's golden emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth. Sutherland portrays
Marcus' uncle Aquila, who has retired in Britain; Strong is cast as
Guern, an ex-soldier who holds crucial information about the Ninth.